Ecopsychology, Ecospirituality

[Introduction to, Ecopsychology, Ecospirituality ?2024, by Anne Hilty]

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A long walk along the coast of New York’s Fire Island after a ‘white hurricane’, a fierce January blizzard that tragically, and near-mythically, tossed thousands of starfish up into the dunes. A canopy walk along suspended bridges of wood and rope, high up in Costa Rica’s pristine Monteverde cloud forest. Trekking one of Hong Kong’s outlying islands, as a python slithers across my path, wild boar rustle in the shrubbery, and green sea turtles nest on the beach at its southern tip. In the sea with traditional free-diving haenyeo, many of them elderly grandmothers, off the coast of South Korea’s Jeju Island. Walking meditation on one of Istanbul’s smallest islands, with its black bull, white horse, and hooded crows at the peak alongside ruins of a Byzantine monastery, pollinators at every flower, fungi on the forest floor, and one ancient olive tree. I am refreshed, rejuvenated, reborn.

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“My generation doesn’t have any future, because of climate change. How can I care about anything anymore? What’s the point?”

Struck hard by the words of this 12-year old girl, brought to me by her parents for counseling, I instantly sensed my own climate distress, and took a deep breath as I gathered my thoughts.

“I can’t promise you a future,” I replied. “No one can. But I can tell you a couple of things that might help: I still have hope, because a whole lot of people around the world are working on this problem, as enormous as it is. And, my love for nature brings me sadness at the damage we’ve caused … and also great joy, in the deep relationship I have with the natural world. Could we maybe explore this together?”

We live in an era fraught with climate-related anxiety and despair. At the same time, we see a trend of all things ‘eco’, seemingly everywhere we look.

So what is ecopsychology? Is it just another fad? And ecospirituality – merely a New Age idea?

No, and no.

There’s a goodly amount of intersection between these terms, and we’ll explore that once we’ve looked at each one separately. Suffice it to say, for now, that ecopsychology was developed as a subspecialty of depth psychology more than 3 decades ago, when environmental concerns were surely raised but we weren’t yet talking much about global warming, much less imminent ecosystems collapse. Ecospirituality emerged even earlier, conceptually in the 1960s and in the scientific literature by the 1980s – and organically, in indigenous cultures around the world from earliest times. (More on that soon.)

These two topics and their intersection are at the very foundation of my own life. My heritage is one of Swiss Anabaptists, Amish (maternal) and Mennonite (paternal), who immigrated to the US in the 18th and 19th centuries to escape religious persecution as heretics. Referred to as stillen im lande, the quiet ones of the land, in their distinct form of German, they live in separatist agrarian-based communities. My near ancestors broke away from these communities yet remained farmers, and in my childhood, I was able to spend a goodly amount of time on family farms. My father, his own childhood in a farming environment, frequently took us camping, hiking, fishing, and other outdoor activities. I developed a deep love for the natural world, my primary source of psychological wellbeing.

By adolescence, keen on academia, I wanted nothing more than a quiet spot with a stack of good books – and discovered the Transcendentalists of 19th century New England (US): Thoreau, Emerson, and the like, one of the core principles of which was the divinity of nature. This resonated powerfully with me, and I began separating myself from the monotheistic religion of my childhood in order to seek forms of ecospirituality instead.

In early adulthood, this morphed into a practice of nature-based spirituality, environmental activism, and vegetarianism. In my professional development, I gravitated to East Asian health practices such as traditional Chinese medicine and Japanese shiatsu, alongside transpersonal psychology, all of which is very much in keeping with these principles; in such there is no separation of body, mind, and spirit, nor between self and other, nor of human from nature. By mid-adulthood I was living in NE Asia and studying shamanism, Buddhism, and Taoism, while traveling the world and exploring the natural environment in all its many variations.

I have just stepped into my elderhood, a stage burgeoning with the potential for deep psychological and spiritual development, and the natural world for me represents a significant source of meaning. In my home I maintain a shrine to my Ancestors of Land, conducting a brief ritual to same at both open and close of every day. I immerse myself in nature each week as I travel by boat to a nearby island and trek alone for hours, meditating and honoring the land spirits. And I am gravely concerned about the impending ecological crisis.

Ecopsychology, as we will soon see, is one of meaning-making, of addressing climate-related anxiety and despair, and of time spent in nature as a source of mental health and resilience. Ecospirituality allows one to look at manifestations of nature and see spirit, and deity – or a meaningful metaphor or archetype of same. These underlying principles intersect to form what has been called deep ecology, in which the individual resonates with the natural world, and indeed, ceases to hold a view of ‘individualism’ at all, but one of universal interconnectedness instead. With this naturally comes a deeply felt sense not only of meaning, and of wellbeing, but also of responsibility.

Shall we begin?

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Bowing deeply many times in succession during my stay at one of Korea’s Buddhist temples, I considered the rise at astronomical dawn for first prayers, the walking meditations in nearby groves, the pure and natural foods, the temple’s remote setting on a mountaintop. When we are in the midst of nature, the lead monk told me, and we consume the foods of nature and drink its tea, breathe in the early morning light and wash in the nearby pond, only then are we close to a state of harmony. Our minds are eased, we are healed of all our anxieties and sadnesses, and we are as we were meant to be. When we in turn care for the natural world, understand that this is our responsibility, then we achieve true wellbeing.

Ecopsychology, Ecospirituality: Psyche & Spirit, by Anne Hilty, ?2024